


Daddy Issues

by x_los



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Creepy, Dysfunctional Family, Evil Plans, Family, M/M, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 04:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20464820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: In which the sins of the father are visited upon the daughter.





	Daddy Issues

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this 11 years ago for a best_enemies kink meme prompt regarding Jenny. I've edited it lightly, and am x-posting it over here for Posterity Reasons.

He’d felt almost certain of what and who she was when their time streams first crossed, and known her absolutely the second he’d seen her. She was bent over a fried console, trying to fix a dilapidated rocket that would never fly again—the Master could have told her that right now. When he got close enough to look at her properly (an unshielded, fledgling parody of a Time Lord), she snapped ‘round, seeking the source of a sound that wasn’t a sound. She’d _ physically tilted her head_, which meant she couldn’t even recognise the feeling of another Time Lord’s mental presence creeping into her awareness. They’d stared at each other and the Master had circled her like a predator.

The last time he’d seen a face like hers, it had been staring back at him from the other side of a curtain of flame as he’d screamed and begged for the Doctor to save him. Sarn had been worlds away and lifetimes ago, but in the instant she’d turned, the girl looked so like the Doctor that he wanted to snap her neck and watch the light in her eyes fade. Yet even suddenly choking on old, potent rage, he had more sense than to waste her like that. 

“Now how on Earth did _ you _ come to be?” the Master demanded, holding her gaze as he pressed command into the question and hypnosis into her mind. 

She didn’t even know to fight him. She explained her origins in detail and the Master felt a flicker of something like relief that the Doctor hadn’t, in the wake of the Master’s apparent death (an easy enough bit of fakery—the Doctor might have seen through it easily, if he hadn’t been determined to believe the Master wouldn’t do it to him), gone and done something incredibly stupid like rush off to forge a new family in some pathetic attempt to replace him. It wouldn’t have been the first time. 

“Where is he, then?” 

She had the Doctor’s eyes, and they were as wide and amazed as the Doctor’s were when something wasn’t going his way. But she wasn’t at all confused as to who they were talking about. There was only one ‘he’ for both of them. 

“He left me.” There was something small and flickering in the girl’s expression, hidden as an animal hides itself when it crawls somewhere secret to die. 

So the Doctor had abandoned her, young and desperate. Oh, how _ perfect. _

The Master could feel the newness of her mind, messy and unformed. Its scattered bits of military knowledge were nothing compared to the true, holistic experience of a woman grown. She looked a score of years old—not yet even an adolescent, in Gallifreyan terms—but it seemed she was even younger than she appeared. Judging by her own account, she hadn’t truly been alive for longer than a month. She was just a frightened child, who wanted more than anything to find her father. 

Her voice trembled as she tried to explain. “He thought I was dead and he left me. I’m trying to find someone, someone who could—”

“Someone of your own kind,” the Master finished, stepping closer and brushing his hand over her familiar blonde hair. “Someone of _ my _ kind.” 

Her eyes flared, then narrowed and dulled, suspicious. “He said we were all alone. The last. My dad doesn’t lie, he never would.”

“Oh, he didn’t mean to,” the Master assured her. After all, the Doctor never_ intended _ to be an infuriating hypocrite. “You see I know your Papa _ very _ well. He’s an old friend of mine. He’s just a bit confused these days, Jenny.” He plucked the name from her mind easily, and answered her look of bewilderment with a smile. “Come here.” He gave her his best ‘poor baby’ expression. “Come on, there’s a good girl.” 

Rusty habits, well-suited to the task before him, came back easily enough when he had need of them. He held out a coaxing hand and gathered Jenny to him, unresisting. He led her by the hand away from her craft, her tools, and the sum of her short life. 

“‘Jenny’. What a human name!” The Master laughed. “It’s even worse than Susan. But then he’s always had a bit of a_ thing _ for them.” His back was to her, and so she couldn’t see the ugly twist that screwed up his mouth when he said it.

“Where are we going?” Jenny asked – sounding perplexed – as he slipped into what ought to have been the guts of a grandfather clock (perhaps she’d never even seen a TARDIS before).

“Home,” the Master told her. “We’re going to find your daddy. Won’t he be surprised to see us?” 

The Master turned a manic grin on Jenny. It reminded her so strongly of her father’s smile that she had to laugh. She felt a rush of trust in him, and gratitude at his having rescued her. However finding her father turned out to be a great deal harder than just wishing for it.

***

—or, as the Master privately put it, it seemed that the Doctor was naturally infuriating, even when he’d no idea he was making things difficult for the Master. In the meantime, the Master gave Jenny a great deal to do.

He didn’t touch her. Or rather his touch was of the friendly and chaste variety entirely appropriate between an older man and his young ward. The Master wanted the Doctor, not an inexperienced, infantile recapitulation of him, stripped of everything they’d been to one another over the centuries. If a clone would have met his needs, the Master would have made one long ago. His current plan was wider-reaching that that, and commensurately more devastating: a thing of infinitely greater beauty. 

The Master taught Jenny to shield herself. To do maths, and then higher maths, and then maths that seemed as if it should have been impossible, but which filed into her head as adroitly as a regiment formed up in rank and file. The two Time Lords (Time Lady, he called her, with teasing solicitude) played the most wonderful games. The Master showed Jenny new worlds, and gave her the patience and attention he could command, when he wanted to. He praised her when she was clever, and Jenny grew fond of his praise. 

“You’re _ horribly _ like your dad,” he’d groan, running a paternal hand over Jenny’s hair and mussing it when she tried to dodge her least favorite lesson. She’d attempted to talk her way around it, to distract the Master with an increasingly wild series of excuses. “He was always skiving off from temporal mechanics. Disgustingly brilliant at nearly everything, obviously, but he never could sit _ still _ long enough to apply himself. Always nattering on. Mucking with my experiments.” He rolled his eyes. “Talking _ me _ into the stupidest things.”

Jenny was deeply affectionate, and she had only the Master to give her considerable store of loyalty to. She propped her chin on her arm and let a fond smile crinkle her eyes. 

“Tell me more about him, Master?” 

And he had such stories to give her, such knowledge in him. He explained her biology, her culture, and how to quiet the raucous cawing of the time lines that had begun to rake through her mind. He called her Jenny, for preference. But in Gallifreyan, which he spoke to her more and more frequently as she picked up their enormously complicated language, he appended her family designation and a rather paternal diminutive to the name.

The Master found he almost _ liked _ having the girl around. Jenny could understand him well enough to converse intelligently, speak his language, and psychically share his thoughts (or at least those thoughts he chose to allow her access to). She was so very sympathetic, like Theta had been before everything had gone so terribly sour.

But just like Theta at that age, he had a larger plan in mind for her. Only this time, he wasn’t a besotted adolescent, inexperienced and unprepared. This time, he’d do the thing quite perfectly.

***

Jenny wasn’t stupid enough to miss the signs, but she didn’t know quite how to broach the topic. She surprised herself as much as the Master when, in the middle of a TARDIS diagnostic, she blurted out, “Are—Were you and my dad together?” 

The Master stared at Jenny in uncommunicative silence. She babbled on, worrying she might have offended him. 

“You know, um. _ Together- _ together. He thinks you’re dead, right? He was so—There was something so sad about him. And he said he wasn’t with either of those women, like it wasn’t even a question. You grew up with each other, you knew his, I mean _ our _ entire family. You talk about him all the time. You know his favorite foods, and what he thinks about the most random things. Only a partner would remember all that.” 

Jenny’s voice grew confident. “You _ were_.” She nearly accused him of it, to cover her embarrassment. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“What, ‘hello Jenny, I’m doing your dad and have been since time immemorial, lovely to meet you’?” The Master snickered, and Jenny had to grin back. “Stumbling across the only other surviving member of your species wasn’t enough of a shock for you?” He tutted. “Aren’t you the little adventuress.”

She rolled her eyes, “Really though, you could’ve said. It would have saved you the trouble of all that ‘we were roommates’ nonsense.”

“_But_,” the Master said reasonably, “we _ were _ roommates.”

“_Please_.” Jenny playfully chucked her stylus at him. The Master caught it with one hand and twirled it. “For the record, ‘messing with each other’s time experiments’ is the lamest euphemism ever.”

“Parents are contractually obliged to be lame.” The Master stuck his tongue out at her. “It makes the young feel more secure in their own coolness.”

***

“Did he tell you about the war?” 

They were walking in a forest and she could hear the trees singing in her mind. The Master had brought Jenny to this world to help her learn to listen to such things, and, he said with a conspiratorial grin, for the fun of the thing of the trip. The arboreal chorus was heady and sweeping, so overwhelming Jenny felt a bit light headed. But out loud there was only the whisper of leaves in the wind, and the Master’s quiet words carried.

“Yes,” she whispered, recalling how haunted the Doctor had been. Even years after it had ended, Jenny’s powerful, determined father had seemed afraid of even the memory of that conflict. “He said it was terrible.”

“Two almighty civilisations burning.” The Master shuddered with an emotion Jenny interpreted as revulsion. “It hurt him, Jenny. It twisted his mind. It made him suspicious of everyone. He was such a loving child—it was the war that made him reject you as he did when you first met, _ not _him. You have to believe that.”

“I do.” Jenny tried to anyway, because she worshiped her father, and she had come to love and respect the Master. She would have walked through fire, if he’d asked her to. 

“I’m afraid that even when we find your dad, he might not be happy to see me,” the Master said. “His experiences in the war have changed him. I know this isn’t easy to hear, but he’s not himself, and he’s suffering. None of the humans he associates with are familiar enough with the man he was to see it, or to help him. How _ could _ they? They’ve no idea of what he’s been through. They’ve never even met another Time Lord!” 

The Master heaved a sigh of frustration. He took Jenny’s hand as she navigated a hillock, and rather than letting it go, squeezed it as though to reassure himself. 

“Seeing what’s become of his mind, hearing him rave—it breaks my hearts. Because I was there with him, he thinks_ I’m _ the enemy. He’s fantasized elaborate scenarios in which _ I _ tortured him.” 

The Master’s sigh was operatic in its falsity, but untutored Jenny heard only pain. Her eyes grew huge with sympathy for the Master, who turned to face her and gripped her arm too tight, capturing her gaze with the glittering, uncomfortable intensity of his own. 

This, she thought, must be what grief looked like.

“Can you imagine how much that hurts me?” the Master hissed. “He needs me so much, never more in his _ lives _, and he’s too damaged to let me near him.”

Jenny abruptly enfolded the Master in her arms, tucking her small head down on the shoulder of his suit jacket. She wanted to offer comfort, but she knew no words to fix this kind of pain. She didn’t even know if they existed.

“I’m sorry,” she tried feebly, meaning it. “I’m _ so _ sorry.” 

Her poor father, so warped by what he’d had to do that he looked at the Master––this wonderful, caring man, his dearest friend, who loved him more than anything in the universe—and saw a threat. 

“It’s the guilt of having been forced to destroy Gallifrey, for the sake of the universe, that’s done this to him. You saw it. He’s pathetically nervous around guns, loathes soldiers—” The Master laughed bitterly. “He used to be scientific advisor to a special ops organization! And after that, he was a brilliant general in the war. You see what he’s been reduced to?” The Master shook his head. “If only I could get close to him, get into his mind and repair it. We could have him_ back _, Jenny. We could be a proper family.”

The Master held the girl a little further from him, so that he could look into her eyes. “We could _ help _people—not run about madly like he does now, but really guide them. Like Time Lords are meant to. We owe that to the memory of our people.” 

Jenny nodded—the Master had told her all about the prerogatives and responsibilities of the Time Lords. She understood that after the war, her father had abdicated his duty to shepherd species that couldn’t see the Time Stream like they could. The Master, who knew the Doctor best, had told her he suspected this was because the Doctor was now too full of self-loathing to want to wield his own rightful power.

In his devotion, the Master was trying to restore her father. He wanted, more than anything, to save the Doctor from himself. He’d only hinted at much of this, but Jenny was cleverer than he imagined. She congratulated herself on figuring it all out. She admired the Master deeply. How her father must have adored and appreciated him, when he was in his right mind! How he must miss him now, even if he couldn’t understand or admit it. 

“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” The Master smiled, rueful. “We—” he swallowed hard, “always wanted children.”

“I think I have an idea,” Jenny said suddenly. 

Her father (probably because she’d been born after his breakdown) didn’t associate _ her _with the trauma of the war. If Jenny could get a distress signal out where the Doctor would hear it, he would come running to her. If she pretended to be mentally injured, in need of psychic healing, he would pry open his mind to help her. The Master could then enter that opened chink and gain full access to the Doctor. He’d be able to do anything he needed to do to secure and heal her dad.

***

The Master smiled indulgently as Jenny spun out the plan he’d been slowly working her towards. Her thinking it was all her idea was his favorite part. 

“You are _ brilliant_.” He kissed her forehead. “You really are. Oh Jenny, I’m so proud of you.”

And he was––after a fashion. Why not?

Jenny was bit of the Doctor, shaped by him. She was growing into a cunning young lady. He’d given her a gun again, and set about undoing the damage the Doctor had done to her beautiful potential. It was easy. All she wanted was a little encouragement, and his steady hand on her shoulder when her finger shook on the trigger. He’d been there to assure her that everything was all right, that he was right here. He’d eased Jenny through the first few ‘necessary deaths’. By now, she would probably have turned a flame thrower on a child if he’d told her it was her painful duty. In a way, she truly was their daughter. 

Jenny was going to bring the Master the prize that had eluded him for centuries. An amusing paradox: their Doctor’s daughter would bring about the consummation of their union. But then why had Jenny had been born from one paradox, if not so that she could create another in turn? It all made a sort of majestic sense. 

Standing in the forest, Jenny bit her lip tentatively as the wind picked up. She wanted the Master’s pride, and her father’s love. And for months now, she’d wanted some token of her desire for belonging. “Master. Would it be all right if I called you—”

She didn’t even need to finish the question. 

“My _ dear _ Jenny. I’d be delighted if you would.”

Jenny smiled the Doctor’s flash-bulb grin. “I love you, Daddy.”


End file.
